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Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

Wait, how is a civilian made film enough evidence for a conviction or a fine?

Does this mean I can build my next "fine your nemesis" as a service by using deep fake ?

How would you expect it to work? The police are not everywhere at all times. If there's a report of something, they have to investigate and try to interview witnesses. If one of the witnesses has a video, why wouldn't that be evidence?

In my country (France), there are very specific conditions for videos to be accepted as court evidences. One of them is that if you are a private party, the video recording must have been advertised to the person on film prior to the begining of it, and must be declared to a special authority (CNIL), to avoid abuses.

EU countries in general are much more privacy focused compared to the UK. UK law & culture is that you have no expectation of privacy in public, and people can take pictures/take video of you anytime you are in public, for any reason.

Got a source for that?

My cursory reading of https://www.dalloz-actualite.fr/chronique/reflexions-sur-l-u... seems to only limit it for accusation by public authorities.

https://www.eye-tech.fr/videosurveillance-constituer-preuve-...

"Pour assurer la fiabilité de la preuve soumise via un dispositif de vidéosurveillance, la qualité de l’image s’avère également déterminante ; plus précisément, elle doit comporter 704 x 576 pixels de résolution au moins et une cadence de 12 images par seconde et plus. L’installation d’un tel système doit être justifiée par un besoin de sécurité ou de protection (personnes, biens, locaux, mesure d’anti-terrorisme). Dans le domaine privé, les personnes concernées doivent en être avisées et vous devez déclarer le dispositif à la CNIL."

"dans le domaine privé" could mean "by private party" or "on private properties", and since IANAL, I don't know which one. The first one would match my understanding, the second would mean the public street would be ok.

Thanks for the link! It's labelled «vidéosurveillance» though, it feels like it only applies to fixed permanent cameras, not smartphone or GoPro ad-hoc evidence.

Indeed, but "vidéosurveillance" works for mobile camera if put on a guard or on the police.

On a civilian? I don't know. Maybe intent matters.

This is where I guess I have to ask my lawyer.

Filing a false police report is a crime. Building a tool to facilitate that would certainly open you up to civil and possibily criminal penalties.

I don't see how "civilian made" has any bearing on the applicability of video evidence.

Why not? What's the fundamental difference between this and a CCTV camera in a gas station?

In the EU, there is an expectation of privacy in public spaces. The gas station CCTV is only allowed to film private property, and maybe a tiny slitter of public space if there is no alternative.

Most countries also require registration of cameras to a governemental agency and warning/consent of the people being filmed. That's at least the theory.

There's lots of nuance though. CCTV that just records all the time is not the same as someone recording because of a specific incident. And then you get things like rules for dashcams that allow dashcams to keep an e.g. 30s buffer that gets saved on button press or if a crash is detected, ...

There has to be a sign at the gas station that shows that this area is filmed (at least in Europe). The sign has to tell you who is responsible and why you are filmed. On this basis you can refuse to enter the area.

The fundamental difference is that you can at least in principle choose not to go into an area where you are filmed and know it beforehand while the other person's did not know that they are filmed. I guess they wouldn't have texted while driving in this case. They assumed privacy in their own car and on their phone.

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